FRED MANTEGHIAN BLOG

I really regretted not being able to go to CES this year. While CEDIA may be more tailored to UltimateAVmag's beat, CES is still the big dog of consumer electronic shows and I missed not getting bitten.

It looks like 2007 was a lot of fun. I really like how, and this is cute, the show is over but Shane is still Photoshopping himself into a half dozen pictures with industry luminaries he could only dream of meeting!

But, I can live as vicariously as the next guy and my boys, Tom, Shane and new kid Randy, did a spectacular job covering the show. It seems every time I checked the show blog, and that was several times a day, there were new posts with which to virtualize my days away. Each post was so wonderfully detailed and insightful, I felt like I was there. If only someone would just jack hammer my feet.

But there's no substitute for actually getting to see, hear, taste, smell and listen to the stuff that makes grown men drool. So without further ado, and apologies to everyone who at some point realized they had ten fingers and made a big deal of it on their late night TV show, here is my list of top ten things that I wish I had experienced in person.

10. Magnepan's Center Channel Speaker. I speak with Magnepan's Wendell Diller on a regular basis because, well, frankly, he has no friends, and neither do I. Eventually, after some polite chit chat, we get to the one thing that's been sticking in my craw – a real high end, true ribbon center channel for an uptown Magnepan surround system. Well, Heimlich maneuvers away, no more stuff stuck in my gullet. Take a look at that center channel. And that base thing is a bass thing. It holds up the center channel when installed free standing as in the picture and acts as a low frequency coupler (Magnespeak for a woofer) as well.

9. Optoma's HD81 1080p projector with an anamorphic lens. Okay, so $13,000 is a budget buster for me and lots of other people, especially for a single chip DLP projector, but if Tom Norton raves about something, you really want to see it.

8. The man behind the curtain! Okay, seriously, I mean the stuff that JVC wanted you to see but didn't want anyone who reads your stuff to see. But I already saw their DLA-HD1 projector in Japan and wow, it's a doozy! Three chips, no wheels, and no end to the rumors that it is sharper than any of the Sony gems.

7. A 3-chip 1080p DLP" by Dreamvision, with Gennum VXP processing for under $10K – actually, $7,800 which is midway between Sony's two SXRD projector offerings. I have to wonder how quickly what Sony and JVC are doing with LCoS will lead to innovations (translate: huge price cuts) in DLP technology too.

6. The first universal hi-def player" in the solar system if not the actual universe. You see, it doesn't fully implement HDi Interactivity, so are you going to get the last bit of entertainment out of your HD-DVDs? Who knows, but as someone who spent years buying the "collectors edition" of a DVD only to skedaddle off to bed the minute the movie was over, I'm not so sure my life would be effected.

5. And this from the company that brought you the Dual Disc. You, ugh, do remember the Dual Disc don't you? It had DVD-Audio on one side and the yummy crme filling of an Oreo cookie on the other side as I recall. Anyway, Warner's back with their, ugh, new Dual Disc idea and here it is. Ready? Okay. This then is the idea: Put a Blu-Ray copy of a movie on one side of a disk and an HD-DVD copy on the other side. And then of course, use that real tiny 4 font print on the pinky circle in the middle. I'm sure it will be just fine, and everybody will live happily ever after. Anyone remember DV18? Didn't think so, and you won't remember what #5 was on my list a year from now either.

4. Like my chances of hitting a $1,600 jackpot on a slot machine in Vegas, again, at the tail end of a $20 bill, the 100,000:1 contrast ratio of Samsung's newest LCD panels use LED backlighting to obtain their outstanding black levels. I saw Pioneer's 20,000:1 plasma in Japan and I fell in love, so 100,000:1 should leave me breathless. The Samsung's black level might even be something that could soften my 'bedder dead than LCD" attitude once and for all.

3. A 108" LCD panel from Sharp. 'Nuff said.

2. The high-end two channel people who used to hang out at the Alexis Park motel now being asked to show at the Venetian. Wow. Can silverware be far behind?

And finally . . .

1. Watching the Blu-Ray Association talking tough must have been pretty funny. I would have asked the Blu Man Troup if they thought the endless parade of delays that accompanied the introduction of their high def format was a deliberate attempt at getting the pity vote.

Yes or no?